White Friday, Singles' Day a hit in UAE

Online shopping events such as White Friday, Cyber Monday and Singles' Day are gaining immense popularity among consumers in the UAE.

International major shopping events like Black Friday and Singles' Day are beginning to trend in the UAE, but they are still at a nascent stage in the country despite retailers offering huge discounts on a wide range of products during the sale period.
Industry players said online sale offers for a limited period under internationally-known shopping festivals are gaining momentum in the UAE as shoppers wait for discounts and exclusive deals from major online retailers that generated sales worth millions of dirhams on White Friday and Singles' Day.
After extending a hearty welcome to the globally-renowned shopping event Black Friday - celebrated as White Friday in the UAE - online shoppers in the UAE await for the four-day event that also helps boost e-commerce in the region. Retailers such as Aldo also offered "buy one get one free" offers on a wide range of footwear, handbags and accessories collection as part of the three-day White Friday promotion.
 
Deals to grab
GCC e-commerce retailer Souq.com, which launched White Friday in the UAE in 2014, offered 25,000 new deals this year. It expects to sell more than 100,000 mobile phones, 100,000 health and beauty products and 50,000 items within its new fashion apparel and shoes category during the four-day sale period.
"At least one million items are expected to be sold during the four-day shopping festival that ended on Saturday," Souq.com said, which registered 13 million visitors and sold more than 600,000 items in 2015.
The Middle East's largest online marketplace platform received tremendous response on White Friday and it doubled its sales during the four-day extravaganza in 2015. This year, it again aims to attract customers with lucrative offers of up to 80 per cent discount and expects 50 per cent of its sales to come from non-electronics products.
"This year we have prepared for the largest ever online shopping festival with an anticipated one million items expected to be sold via our website and mobile app during the four-day extravaganza," said Ronaldo Mouchawar, CEO and co-founder of Souq.com.
 
Singles' Day sales
Singles' Day sales is also trending in the UAE as online shoppers in the country are now also opening their wallets wide for the counterpart of the Chinese shopping festival.
Online shopping portal Awok.com added Singles' Day to the UAE's online shopping events calendar where retailers have recorded high sales this year. The portal saw a 500 per cent increase in the number of orders received in the UAE this year compared to 2015 and it sold more than 100,000 products sold during the Singles' Day sale. The UAE-based online platform had offered up to 70 per cent store-wide discount with over 5,000 products across all categories at reduced prices.
"The UAE has high Internet penetration as well as an eclectic mix of residents. The combination of this steers an increase in the number of people turning to online shopping," Ulugbek Yuldashev, founder and chief executive of Awok.com, told Khaleej Times.
Singles' Day commenced in 1990s for single people in China to celebrate and socialise. The day then became a game changing mega shopping event, an equivalent of Black Friday in the US that generated $1.15 billion online sales in just five hours on Friday.
On Singles' Day, the most popular categories are electronics and accessories, home and kitchen appliances, health and beauty products, fashion products, and toys and games. Females accounted for just 27 per cent and males 73 per cent of the shoppers that purchased items during the Singles' Day sale.
"Online shopping events such as White Friday, Cyber Monday, Singles' Day, etc, are gaining immense popularity among consumers in the country. A 500 per cent increase from last year in the orders received on Awok.com on Singles' Day bears witness to the growing popularity of such events," said Yuldashev.
Head of retail at consultancy firm grmc Rahul Rathi said online sales in the UAE currently constitute six per cent of overall retail sales and equate to approximately Dh9.6 billion.
"This is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 50 per cent and quadruple over the next four to five years," he said.
Kamal Vachani, director of Al Maya Group, a supermarket chain in the UAE, said the UAE has one of the highest digital penetrations in the world, but online grocery shopping is still at its nascent stage in the country.
"Al Maya has chosen to go the pure-play route and has launched online grocery in June 2016 and has seen rapid increase of business via this channel. What is interesting is that the average transaction is about twice that of the orders made through traditional methods, such as the telephone. Omni-channel grocery retailing is every retailer's aspiration, some claim to be while very, very few have got it right," Vachani said.
- muzaffarrizvi@khaleejtimes.com